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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wearable electronic systems and devices, physical therapy devices, solar energy collectors, and automobile dashboards.
2. Description of Related Art
The related art descriptions in the above cited related applications are hereby incorporated in full by reference. Briefly summarizing, a number of wrist-wearable electronic devices have been proposed, such as Olsen, U.S. Pat. No. 4,847,818; Russell, U.S. Pat. No. 4,864,658; Swartz, U.S. Pat. No. 5,514,861; Blonder, U.S. Pat. No. 5,381,387; Seager, U.S. Pat. No. 5,214,623; and Houlihan, U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,324. But these devices are not ideal in that they do not provide a convenient manual interface for the hand of the arm upon which the device is worn. Moreover, no wrist-wearable docking mechanism, whereby numerous attachments can be interchanged for wrist-wearable use using the same arm attachment mechanism, is provided, nor is a system of movable couplings that is sufficient to allow swiveling, tilting, revolving, and/or linear movement of entire electronic devices, such as telephones or credit card readers, while being worn on the arm.
One noteworthy effort appears in Moore, U.S. Pat. No. 5,749,841, which provides a wrist brace with built-in keys that can be accessed by the fingers of the arm upon which the brace is worn. However, Moore provides no means for retracting this keypad under the user's sleeve when not in use nor any means for using these keys to control or interact with swiveling, tilting, or otherwise movable, wrist-wearable electronic components.
What is needed, therefore, is a wrist-wearable electronic device for data entry, computing, and other applications which provides a manual interface that can be manipulated by the hand of the arm upon which the unit is worn and can also be retracted into a less obtrusive position when not being used. What is also needed is a device that provides a wrist-wearable foundation upon which components that are larger than a typical wristwatch can be mounted in such a way as rotate, tilt, and/or revolve while in place on a user's forearm. What is also needed is a wrist-wearable docking station that enables a single arm attachment mechanism to be used with a wide variety of interchangeable, electronic attachments or accessories while allowing electrical power and/or data exchange between components in the arm attachment mechanism and the given attachment.
Medical research indicates that carpal tunnel syndrome (“CTS”) results from and is aggravated by certain causes, including: (1) physical pressure upon the hand, wrist or forearm, as in the case of resting the wrist on a computer keyboard for extended periods of time; (2) repetitive motion, such as repeated use of the buttons of a computer mouse; (3) pressure exerted upon the carpal tunnel and the nerves of the palm by overdeveloped hand muscles or muscles which are subject to involuntary tension and spasm; (4) trauma to the hand and wrist, as in the case of injuries caused by a car wreck.
Existing devices used to protect or treat the human hand, wrist or forearm often do as much damage as they do good. In particular, the wrist braces most commonly available and often prescribed by doctors and physical therapists for people at risk for CTS or who already suffer from it serve to prevent some harmful motions of the wrist, but the potential gains from eliminating dangerous motions are more than offset by the harm caused by the pressure of the brace itself upon the wrist or palm of the user. Some offerings have avoided this problem, such as Working, U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,460, which provides a splint that makes contact with the back of the hand rather than the carpal tunnel region.
However, Working introduces other problems. Specifically, in gripping the fingers as a group, Working crushes the phalanges and metacarpals together. Moreover, braces that resist the motion of the wrist and fingers have a second unintended, potentially harmful result: in resisting flexing of the wrist and fingers, a brace can serve as a “resistance training” device against which the spasming hand and forearm muscles of a CTS sufferer can push, thereby further aggravating the overdevelopment of these muscles. Other noteworthy CTS-related offerings which are onto the right idea but suffer from this fault include Eck, U.S. Pat. No. 5,746,707, and Spits, U.S. Pat. No. 6,095,994.
Existing solutions also include highly invasive surgeries that cost CTS sufferers a great deal of time, money and pain and which are associated with a high degree of risk of further damage to the patient's hand or wrist.
What is needed is a device that deters motion without applying pressure to the wrist or the bones of the hand, particularly pressure to the carpal tunnel area. What is also needed is a device that deters but does not prevent motion and does not provide resistance to the flexor muscles of the hand and fingers sufficient to allow a user to continue to build up the hand and forearm muscles unintentionally. What is also needed is a solution to CTS that is noninvasive, inexpensive, low-risk, adjustable to fit many different hand sizes, inflatable, and/or reusable.
Solar panels for use on rooftops are commonly known, but inhabitants of multistory apartments and condominium buildings typically do not have access to or control of the roofs of buildings. Many such inhabitants use window-mounted air conditioners, however. What is needed is a solar panel that can be installed in a manner similar to window-mounted air conditioners.
Conventional automobile cabin air purification systems fall into two categories: (1) usage of a single, central filter, such as that of MicronAir; and (2) aftermarket solutions that provide a filter that attaches to each single vent in a car dashboard, such as that provided by FreshAir Filters as per U.S. Pat. No. 6,293,860 to Kim. Neither of these solutions is ideal. The centralized system requires periodic changing of the filter by opening of the hood of the car and changing the filter just as some other engine part. Many automobile owners do not work on their own cars and forget to have the filter changed by someone else. Meanwhile, the aftermarket solution is clearly not as aesthetically pleasing as an OEM solution would be; sticking filters to the dashboard of a car diminishes the intended appearance of that dashboard.
What is needed therefore is an OEM solutions that leverages the benefits of a centralized system of filtration while also allowing automobile owners to change their own cabin air filters from within the passenger cabin rather than from under the hood.
Conventional automobile odometers and license plates are not ideal in that they require the reading of actual numerical digits by an observer or an instrument, such as a camera or scanner. One attempted solution is provided in Bone, U.S. Pat. No. 5,171,976, which provides a bar-code odometer. This device is nonetheless less than ideal in that it is still too complicated to be read at large distances.
What is needed therefore is an improved odometer and license plate that can be read by a human or a machine at far greater distances.
Other technologies related to the system and device disclosed herein include:
The Quicktionary OCR scanning and translating pen; the IOGEAR phaser handheld RF wireless mouse with laser pointer; the wearable RFID tag reader developed by Schmidt, Gellersen, and Merz; the Syscan plug-in RFID reader; Rooftrac roof-mounted photovoltaic solar panel; the OneTouch network tester; AEMC megohmmeter; Panasonic handheld nose hair trimmer; Symbol arm wearable bar-code scanner; Testo handheld digital manometer; MicroPhotonics handheld ultrasonic hardness tester; Goldeneye battery energy gauge; Intermec Sabre 1555 handheld bar-code scanner/RFID interrogator; Archos handheld digital video recorder; Dictaphone personal dictation machine; Voice-It handheld personal digital audio recorder/dictation machine; Xybernaut and ViA wearable computers; and the other cited related art. Many of these devices appear to have been first created and/or made public after the filing date of the parent application hereof and priority filing dates enumerated above.